PHYSICAL STANDARDS
MORTALITY STATISTICS r REPLY BY DR. GUNSON r The opinion that the mortality statistics were not the soundest criteria of the physical fitness of a people was expressed by Dr. E. B. Gunson yesterday in referring to the contention of a public health officer at Wellington that Dr. Gunspn's statement that Now Zealanders were physically a B grade people was "exaggerated nonsense," and that the mortality figures refuted the statement.
Dr. Gunson said that the test of nutrition introduced in 1913 was entirely inadequate to-day, and in the last 20 years New Zealand health records had told an appalling story of malnutrition among schoolchildren. "I claim that the official figures I quoted are open to this interpretation, or they mean nothing," Dr. Gunson added. If the children of New Zealand wore supplied with one pint of milk each day it would be the beginning of applied preventive medicine in New Zealand. There was every reason to assume a direct relationship between the low consumption of milk and the prevalence of nutritional diseases during childhood and .adolescence.
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New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22166, 20 July 1935, Page 15
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178PHYSICAL STANDARDS New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22166, 20 July 1935, Page 15
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